Brussels Opens Its In-House Journal to Eleven More Nations

Open Research Europe, the open-access academic publishing platform set up by the European Commission in 2021, is widening its doors. Until now, the service was reserved strictly for scientists working on projects bankrolled by EU programmes such as Horizon Europe. Under a new collective funding model, researchers based in eleven European countries will now be eligible to submit papers free of charge, even if their work was funded entirely from national or local budgets. Articles accepted on the platform remain free for anyone to read.

In traditional academic publishing, researchers often face a frustrating dilemma: surrender their findings to commercial journals behind expensive paywalls, or pay steep processing charges—often running into thousands of euros—to make their work freely accessible. By waiving both reader subscription fees and author publishing charges, the expanded platform removes financial barriers for smaller university departments and research institutes across the participating states, ensuring publicly funded science stays in the public domain.

For years, European policymakers have championed open science while universities quietly complained about the exorbitant invoices sent by commercial publishing houses. ORE was the Commission’s attempt to lead by example, though its initial rulebook reflected typical Brussels caution: if EU taxpayers had not explicitly paid for the grant, the research could not appear on the Commission’s digital real estate. Relaxing that border control signals an unusual willingness in the Berlaymont to run a shared European service without insisting on an EU project logo in the footnotes.

Participating research bodies across the eleven countries will begin rolling out submissions under the collective model, with European science administrators watching closely to see if other member states buy into the shared infrastructure.